OfS funding allocations 2021-22

There's only one surprise here - the "high cost funding" allocations retain that name. There's no "strategic" here.

David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe

The actual funding of course, perfectly reflects the DfE strategy as announced. Here’s the OfS press release, and here’s a plot of the allocations:

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And here’s a plot of the percentage difference between this year and last year (I’ve filtered out FE colleges by default as there are some massive outliers involving not much money, but you can easily add them in using the filter):

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Here the region filter tells quite the story if you set it to “London” – the whole bottom end of the table, showing cuts of between 40 and 100 per cent over last year, is providers based in the capital.

There’s nothing more to say really. All the negative effects we warned against in our coverage, and you warned against in your consultation responses, have come to pass. Possibly someone, somewhere in DfE, is happy.

2 responses to “OfS funding allocations 2021-22

  1. Interesting that the terms and conditions of the grant stipulate that: “The OfS must not directly or indirectly vary any rates of grant on the basis of the region of the UK in which providers and/or students are located or courses offered”.

    The full-time student premium (supplement) would – by allocating funding based on whether or not a student lives in one of the 40% most disadvantaged super output areas – appears to break that condition (arguably directly – depending on how “region” is defined – but definitely indirectly given London receives hardly any funding through this channel)

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